Creation in Prose - Aisha Abraham

RIVER ‘O’ RUBBISH

                       by Aisha Abraham ( V E)

Aye! I am Rivero Singh, you can call me Vero. I live in the Himalayas and I’m an ex-pirate, I only robbed the ships and boats on mighty rivers. Now I am old and tired and can’t sail too far. How much I miss the rivers!

Once, after lunch I went to take a short nap and I had the most awkward dream, God came up to me and said, “Vero, if you want to see your rivers again then at exactly 6:45 in the evening, when I go to grab a bite at the Godly cafe, I will drop a portal at your attic, be sure to be there.” He winked and disappeared! I was not sure if my dream was real but my brain filled with memories of old rivers urged me to go for it.

At 6:45pm exact I was in the attic with a bag of biscuits and a bottle of water and biscuits. Shining brightly, a glorious yellow portal appeared in front of me; it was embedded with jewels. I jumped head first into the portal. Its yellow light strained my eyes. BANG! My head hit something hard. Uggg! Birds circled around my head. I looked in front of me and there was ……… a brick wall!

God, if this is a prank, I am going to be so annoyed. I turned around to see that the brick wall was a part of a huge house, I guess it wasn’t a joke! A horrible stench filled my nose, it smelled like rancid milk and blue cheese, Eww! I covered my nose and went on. I suddenly saw a stream of white chemical froth; but this was supposed to be where the Holy Ganga flowed ….

I was stunned. Suddenly, I heard a soft splash, a woman appeared out of Ganga, but she was as dry as straw. She was weak and her eyes were sad and puffy from crying and her face and hands were covered with dirt. A gush of strong wind suddenly swept her off her feet. As she fell, I caught her in my arms. Her skin was as wrinkled as an old lady’s hand. Astonished by my kindness, she thanked me and said, “You are very kind, so I will answer any one of your questions”.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am the spirit of the mighty Ganga” She answered sadly ,”I know what you must be thinking; the humans did this to me .They think I am a garbage bin ,but I am NOT. I gave them fish, but now all my fish is dying. I gave them fresh ‘WATER’ but now I am left with only bad chemicals and dirty mud. You humans think that you are evolving in a good way, but you are not. For example, like the factory nearby (by this I remembered the beautiful brick house which stood there earlier) they used to make biscuits in paper wrappers but now they use plastic which is dumped into me after use and it chokes me up. What was wrong with paper? very soon there will be no rivers left and hence no life.

 I wish I could just go back to the heavens where I can live forever in peace”, she ended her sentence sadly and dived back into the smelly water. I was so saddened by the careless behavior of people, I decided that from now onwards I would only use organic, recyclable things.

And that’s what Rivero Singh did. 

We too should care for our rivers by not polluting them, we owe them a lot.